Geoff Yang is a founding partner of Redpoint Ventures. Prior to founding Redpoint, Geoff was a general partner with IVP, a firm he joined in 1987. Yang emphasizes investments in consumer media and infrastructure. His media and advertising investments include Ask Jeeves, Clicker, Efficient Frontier, Excite, Machinima, MySpace and TiVo. His networking investments include Calix,Foundry Networks, Juniper Networks, MMC Networks and Wellfleet.

Yang is currently on the Advisory Council for the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and previously served on the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) as well as a Director of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and President of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists (WAVC). Prior to joining IVP, Geoff was an Associate with First Century Partners and a Marketing Representative at IBM Corp. Yang holds a B.S.E. in Engineering and Management Systems from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Venture capitalist Geoff Yang challenges entrepreneurs to "think huge" and to complete the due diligence necessary to understand markets they plan to enter. Yang dispels myths about relationships between founders and investors and encourages new entrepreneurs to be thoughtful about taking on outside capital and engaging venture capitalists.

Venture capitalist Geoff Yang challenges entrepreneurs to "think huge" and to complete the due diligence necessary to understand markets they plan to enter. Yang dispels myths about relationships between founders and investors and encourages new entrepreneurs to be thoughtful about taking on outside capital and engaging venture capitalists.

Venture capitalist Geoff Yang dismantles some prevailing myths around startup founders, including starting a venture before developing an idea and skipping out on doing the "homework" of market and competitive analysis.

"It's my belief that almost every model has been tried," says Geoff Yang, founding partner at Redpoint Ventures. Yang encourages entrepreneurs and investors to look across industries, and throughout history, to find analogous models to understand how a new venture's approach might succeed or fail.

Geoff Yang, founding partner at Redpoint Ventures, lays out measures he uses to identify and define attractive markets to enter. These measures include finding opportunities that are standing in "the path of progress," or that will change the economics of a current solution.

Taking venture capital isn't for everybody, according to Geoff Yang, a founding partner at Redpoint Ventures. While companies who take on venture capital gain resources, unbiased expertise, and access to valuable networks, says Yang, entrepreneurs must understand that in exchange for these resources they will be giving up some ownership and control.

Venture capitalist Geoff Yang examines some misconceptions he frequently sees and hears around starting companies and working with venture capital. These misconceptions relate to customer feedback, hiring experience over talent, and power plays by investors that target original founders.

In response to an audience question, venture capitalist Geoff Yang explains the skills he values in entrepreneurs, particularly around technology startups. Yang describes the importance of getting the right mix between engineering knowledge and product knowledge that can serve as the voice of the customer within a venture.